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Make a chat work - Help !

Hallo,

I have just started my first chat, I was thinking about this since a "long time" because I know that it is better to not have a chat than an empy chat :-) ...

So after many website improvements, I am currently getting about 12.000 visitors by day and about 50.000 page views by day. I was thinking these were good numbers to start a chat... so I did it this last week end but...

...I find 2-3 people chatting and no more.. and this because I am there waiting for somebody...so that other users come and see people to stay in... many of them come and leave due to empy chat...

Have you got any suggestion to get more users to chat ?

Actually I have put a link to CHAT on each page... but this doesn't help so much..

"Meeting every Wednesday and Sunday at 5 pm", so people will know when there are users online. There can be 100 people in the chat at one day, but if they all log in, see that no one is there and leave again, no one will stay (I am speaking from my own experience).

The chat is working since 4 days ago, today I have removed 5 users limit and I am happy to see that I could reach up to 10 users at the same time :->

It is not a lot I know, but it seems that each day will add more users to join and return to the chat!

Actually I am spending a lot of time chatting with other people...trying to make them talk each other... some of them seems prefer to read... I don't know if I am wasting my time or if it could help ...hope yes...

Now while writing, local time is 23.40 and I am surprised to see that there are about 8 people chatting !

I hope it will grow day by day... but now I am asking myself: how can this help my web site ?

I mean, I think that banners on it will not be clicked...or they will have very poor click trought...

...so, could it make people talk of my website around ?

...or I can think at it as a free non "revenue" feature ?

...or will only make me lose click on banners because "random" users clicks on chat instead be atracted by banners ? ;-)